Sunday, October 25, 2015

A brief insight into some interesting small-to-medium-sized
labels that have caught the ear and eye lately.

Shimmering Moods (Netherlands)

Shimmering Moods is an excellent up and coming
ambient/experimental label from Amsterdam that differentiates itself from a lot
of other ambient labels by straying further away from simple drone-fests. Many
of their releases are characterised by experimentation that feels more playful than
intellectual and yet which doesn’t harm the seriousness of the music or dampen
the sense of tranquility and mystery that oozes from the core.

The label´s visual aesthetic matches their
sonic palette of drones, field recordings and somnambulic instrumentation perfectly
with cover imagery featuring real and imagined places in grey scale, abstracted
textures and carefully drafted diagrams. Most of their releases have come as
limited runs of 100 homemade CDs packaged in highly tactile and comforting recycled
cardboard or envelopes with printed photos which highlights the organic feel.
There have been a few sparse vinyl releases too and a couple of digital-only
releases on their Bandcamp page. Frustratingly, their web presence is a bit
mixed, with a big emphasis on Soundcloud and the excellent SHM Podcast series,
but their main webpage never seems to have been finished whereas Bandcamp only
sells some of their releases, with not many of the CDs available there, meaning
it can be a bit of work to hear samples and know what is really available and
where.

Prolific Japanese producer Hidekazu
Imashige from Hiroshima working as Gallery Six released one of the standout
albums earlier this year. “Gasansui” combines a sense of narrative, through the
use of water sounds that reflect beautifully the still cover images taken in
Japan, whereas the underpinning drones provide a mirror-like surface. However,
there is a lot more going on here than background ambience. There is a lot of
dynamic range with tracks seeking to pull you deep into the calm or push you
slowly towards the surface. The processing on the water sounds is also variable
between tracks integrating beautifully with the other sounds, particularly on the
adequately named closing track “Hakusui” (white water) where it has been accelerated
and thinned slightly so that it’s bubbling and dripping sounds integrate
perfectly with the slowly noodling synths. One sound seems to affect the other
such that by the end the water seems more electronic than the machine noises. “An
imaginary friend” works similarly, pairing muffled real time field recordings
from nature and someone moving about a room with hypnogogic chimes to create an
enhanced sense of lucid dreaming.

Best point of entry is probably the two
Mediations compilations that include a wide variety of tracks by what appears
to be their growing core roster of artists who are gathered from far and wide
and include Mexican artist ~~^^^macheteoxidado^^^~~, who has released the “Viento
de las Montañas” (Mountain wind) album and the two long digital tracks “Agua
Santa Limpia Me” inspired by the disappearance of 43 male students in Mexico
in 2014; Kyoto artist Michiru Aoyama who also released the “In a Dream” album
from early this year, and Light Sleeper, who’s recent “The Goodbye That Keeps
On Giving” album is one of the labels other highlights so far. Other noteworthy
artists making an appearance include Portland’s Sage Taylor, and Chris
Anderson’s EchoGrid. Mastering of most releases has so far been done by Early
Reflections (the duo of Oliver Charpier and Wilfried Decaesteker) who also contributes
a track.

Arboretum (Germany)

Arboretum is a collaborative sound and
visual project composed of visual artist Andrea Familari, sound designer Giuseppe
Bifulco (Drøp) and producer Marco Berardi who are all based in Berlin. The
project kicked off in 2012 and so far there are only three releases, two 12” EPs
and one CD album showcasing a diverse sound and a promising future. As the
labels name might suggest, there is a lot of botanical reference throughout the
releases from the track names to the artwork, with the “Unseed” album also
coming with some sakura (Japanese cherry blossom) seeds.

Drøp’s “Vasundhara” EP is a stark,
unfriendly and heavy IDM work closely aligned to the Stroboscopic Artefacts' Monad series or some of the album work of Lucy. It is perhaps no surprise then
that Dadub offers up a remix of the opening track. The overall pacing is slow
and the sounds oppressive despite the space often being sparse. But with violent
beats coming up from below and a rain of grainy noise and feedback descending
from above, there is nowhere to go whereas the is a sustained sense of menace
throughout that makes for a thrilling listen.

Marco Beradi’s “Sycamore” EP released under
the Mogano name was the label’s second release and is billed as a homage to the
Tree of Life and is perhaps more enigmatic than the debut. Opening track “Retama”
and “Anunnaki” both capture the sense of ancient civilization perfectly with grainy
textures, melancholy strings, guitar feedback and funerary and cavernous beats
closer to downtempo drum n bass than techno. Title track “Sycamore” is more
steely, cold and closer to current club sounds with its washes of dystopian
sound and fragmented and atomic high end and tribal pounding drums. The EP is
rounded off by a lovely remix from Kerridge whose aesthetic fits perfectly with
the EPs palette and mood.

Fabio Perletta’s “Unseed” album released
under the Øe moniker takes another turn, well away from the club, and more
towards traditional ambient music. The album features five long tracks that
gradually and gently unfold, with the idea taking inspiration from the Japanese
concept of Hanami which contemplates the transient beauty of nature. Opening
track “Winter, Awakening” is one of the highlights with a shimmering and
kinetic sense of quiet stillness built from bubbling electronics, echoing crystalline
tones and deep religious drones. “Uncertainty, Green” uses a similar approach,
but is slower and seems to separate out both the main sound elements before
bringing them back together with slowly plucked acoustic guitar. “Charm, Hanami”
has an almost shoegaze feel to the underlying bass pulse and its melting
textures like waves of slow guitar feedback. The album finishes off with the
lightest and stillest track, “Creation, Breath” which feels like the ice
thawing at the end of winter and the chance to start a new cycle again.

Kvitnu (Ukraine)

There is so much movement in the tape
underground that you sometimes get the feeling that CDs are somehow uncool.
Personally, I find the whole tape things utterly pathetic and just some hipster
cry for help and a deception that doesn’t really mark anyone or anything as
different or interesting. The reality for me is that tapes were/are mostly poor
audio quality, impractical (to play or rip to other formats) and of all the
audio media, the most easy to break and the most difficult to find decent audio
equipment. But the sad irony is that CDs may be uncool (or perhaps are just a
symbol of consumer capitalism?), but for several decades there has been a lot
of invention and imagination put into how they are presented. One label at the
forefront of exploiting the artistic potential of CDs, both graphically and
musically, has been Ukrainian label Kvitnu (although a Ukrainian label the
postal address is now in Vienna, Austria).

Founded in 2006 by Dmytro Fedorenko (a.k.a
Kotra) as an outlet for Ukrainian artists it has since gone on to have an
international roster and organise nights and festivals as well as release
experimental and abstract electronic music in the vein of Raster Noton and Sähkö.
Most of the artwork is done by Kateryna Zavoloka who also performs and releases
as Zavoloka on the label. The covers are usually beautiful mixed media designs incorporating
base material of different origins (cloth, card etc.) and are embellished in
different ways such as screen prints, embossing and with adorned other physical
materials. The results are highly varied and original.

Sound wise, the label is pretty diverse, releasing
anything from ambient works, to glitch electronica and more techno-orientated
pieces with a tendency towards a darker sound. The label currently has over 40
releases from the last decade, perhaps the most famous of which is Sturqen’s “Peste”
from 2010 which helped the label on to win three prestigious Qwartz Electronic
Music Awards that year. Sturqen is the Portuguese duo of David Arantes and
César Rodrigue and they have since gone on to release several albums for the
label as well as branching out recently to other labels.

Some of their recent releases include
Italian artist Matter (Fabrizio Matrone) who also works as Heidseck who just
released his seventh album “Paroxysmal” and third for the label in as many
years. Like the label, “Paroxysmal” is a diverse work, branching out from the
stunning metallic and brooding ambience of opener “Fluid” through various
chunky rhythmic industrial tracks via several outgrowths of dystopian noise
like the grating and gritty “Surge”, the abstract the unsettling “Amplitude”.
The closing sequence of tracks is both pummeling and with a touch of funk in “Ash”
which bookends the album. Hiss and bass at its best.

Mingle’s “Static” album is something
completely different. It is the work of another Italian, in this case Andrea
Gastaldello, who plays electronics and treated guitar and piano. The result is
a much more mediative and less abrasive ambient work, but still tinged with
dystopian sounds and beats, especially on tracks like “Conditions” and “Words”.
Whereas Matter favours bludgeoning and sparse percussion, Mingle often uses
fast runs of light glitch beats to provide the momentum or keeps the rhythmic
structures deep in the background. The emphasis is thus on flow rather than angular
kinetics. With a lot more instrumentation and slowness, there is more emotional
range and a sweeping feel to the album that is cinematic.

Other highlights include Isolat Pattern’s “Clinical
Ambience” which is a classic glitch album full of rugged force and detail. Pan Sonic’s album “Oksastus” which was recorded
at Kvitnu_live in Kiev in 2009 is one of the labels few forays into vinyl
releases. Just announced is an upcoming release by another Italian artist
Plaster (Gianclaudio Hashem Moniri) called "Mainframe" that will come out at the
end of October with a driving techno feel to several of the tracks.

Annulled Music (Norway)

Annulled Music is a relatively young label
from Norway focused on long tracks of dark and motoric techno and ambient in
the mould of Prologue, Semantica and Northern Electronics. In little over one
year the label has notched up five releases, but all of these have quickly
found the attention of many DJs including the likes of Cio d’Or, Takaaki Itoh
and Ness amongst others. So far the roster includes relatively unknown artists
which give it a freshness and a sense of risk that is another reason to keep
your eyes on it. The label highlight so far is Monochrome’s “Unforgettable call
of the octopus” which is as brilliant in name as it is in sound design. The EP
is poised somewhere between dub techno and experimental, not merely interested in
dancefloor functionality, but also textural grooves and sonic quality. Opener “Empty
into dampness” and “Senses” are both searching tracks that refuse to lock into
a simple groove, but instead work intricate circles around a central and
irregular kick drum. “Misme’s breath” is chugging and ambient, mixing murky
radio voices with thick, inky squirts of percussion. “Uton” is the dancefloor
number with a propelling momentum and a spooky, ethereal tinge. The EP closes
with “Silent Bodies”, a watery number that is the most experimental of the set,
with the weight of the sea bogging down all momentum and sending the lower end
to Davey Jones’ locker amid a blur of voices and seaside sounds.

The first release was BLNDRs “Hypermental”
EP which captures the current range of the label, with dubby tracks like “Chords
Dark” and “Behind the Log Cabin” as well as Prologue-esque “Hypermental (Diving
Mix)”. The highlight from Elle’s more dance floor-orientated EP “Yamaja” is the
slowly building “Alatangana”. Von Grall with releases on Semantica and Planet
Rhythm is also responsible for one of the purest club releases of the label so
far with the standout track being “Falling Bodies” which has plenty of ambience
and hypnotic momentum to keep the late hours moving.

The labels most recent release is also
their first full length (digital only) by Hydrangea, interspersing ambient
tracks with club tracks. The emphasis is on ambience rather than peak time,
with a dark and deep lost feel pervading the album that might favour the more
introverted clubber. Highlight tracks include the brooding “Hope”, the
psychedelic echo chamber techno of “First”. Although the label and the album’s
aesthetic is all moody and greyscale, they are not all monochrome (sic) and
depressing. The middle of the album finds respite in “The Sea Breathe” which is
a welcome shade of simpler sadness touched by a ray of light whereas towards
the end “5 o´clock” is almost a lullaby to signal the end of the nightmare. The
following Bvdub-esque track “Winter sleep” confirms this as it reaches its
branches towards the sun.

White Paddy Mountain (Japan)

Chihei Hatakeyama seems to be arriving at a
peak moment in his career. The prolific ambient artist started playing in rock
bands, but has since migrated to electronic music, playing mostly laptop and
field recordings and having his debut on Kranky back in 2006. Nonetheless his previous
experience is critical to his current sound which often feels closer to
shoegaze than to ambient with clearly audible guitars and other instruments in
many of his works. As well as his solo output, Hatakeyama is also one half of the
electroacoustic duo Opitope along with Tomoyoshi Date and has released plenty
of collaborative albums including the recent “Frozen Silence” with Sakana
Sosomi, “It is, it isn’t” with Japanese ambient artist Hakobune and “Magical
Imaginary Child” with Argentine Federico Durand who has also put out solo releases
on White Paddy Mountain.

White Paddy Mountain debuted in 2010 with
the first of Hatakeyama’s ongoing “Void” series, now up to number VII, but it
is really in the last two years that it has taken off, releasing a large number
of CDRs and digital releases not only by Hatakeyama, but by a growing roster of
international artists including Celer, Aaron Martin and Jeremy Young, which is
testament to its rising potential. Some of the labels recent highlights include
Hatakeyama’s solo album “Mist” which is incredibly gentle and reaffirming, the
more instrumental “Frozen silence” collaboration, “It is, it isn’t” studio live
album which sounds like an ambient take on slow-core rock, and “Bullshead
Emperor” that has a distinctly religious almost Popl Vuh feel.

As well as releases on White Paddy
Mountain, Hatakeyama has also seen recent albums come out on Room 40 (“Moon Light
Reflecting Over Mountains”), who have previously released several other albums
of his, and Glacial Movements (“The Storm of Silence” with Belgian Dirk Serries
to be released in January 2016).

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Not much more that needs to be said except what the music has to say. This mix was the result of collecting tracks for about 6 months and trying to decide how to fit them together. Two themes stuck out: voices and sleep. To make the first fit it seemed best to go with a changing radio station approach, especially as many tracks where already cut up and splice-like. The second set of tracks come from a pool of albums and thereabouts based around sleep including Jeff Bridges' "Sleeping Tapes", Dasha Rush's exceptional "Sleep Step" album and Frank Rothkamm's "Wiener process" album on Baskaru that doesn't feature sadly as its 24 one hour CDs are a bit beyond my budget. In any case, I always find it interesting the subtle subthemes that seem to come to the surface in music. Synchronicity perhaps?

Maybe as well given the northern heat wave and my difficulty sleeping lately, being somewhere in-between sleep and awake at times it is easy to join the dots and make some conceptual link between unrelated tracks and form a narrative of sorts. The structure is intentionally up and down to near silence to simulate that falling away (expressed as well in such a lovely way by the beautiful Lucy track that did not fit in in full sadly). There is also the intentional repetition of small elements like dreams that repeat or that cut back in when least expected as if exerting their own consciousness.

As always, it was made with Adobe Audition with some cut and paste of tracks to make crude collage re-mixes where necessary. One track is actually one of my own field recordings made from the bedroom window of my good friend Frank Cadorna's house in Harlesden, london in 2003 (recorded on mini disc). It features a rather mythical and crude conversation between two locals early one Sunday morning. Thankfully my machine was ready at the time and I only had to hang the mic out the window to catch them mid row. Frightening and funny. It was also a pleasure to pit Flying Saucer Attack (and their wnderful return) with Jeff Mills, probably the first time ever in a mix I imagine, as well as realise that AMP, another Bristol (or ex-Bristol) group are still in business with new music soon.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Australian journalist and author Clinton Walker isn’t
dead, but he must be turning over in his metaphorical grave at the (current)
lack of a Soul Wax Punk 45 compilation focusing on Australian punk and
post-punk. Hopefully I am wrong and there is one on the works, but at the
moment it doesn’t look likely. Focusing mostly on 7” singles, the label just
published their fifth volume of the excellent series, with one on the origins
of punk (Sick On You! One Way Spit! After The Love & Before The Revolution
- Proto-Punk 1969-76 Vol. 3), one on UK punk (There Is No Such Thing As Society
- Get A Job, Get A Car, Get A Bed, Get Drunk! - Vol. 2: Underground Punk And
Post-Punk In The UK 1977-81) and three on the US scene the general collection Kill The Hippies! Kill
Yourself! The American Nation Destroys Its Young - Underground Punk In The
United States Of America, 1973-1980 Vol. 1, followed by two specific volumes: Burn Rubber City Burn! Akron, Ohio
: Punk And The Decline Of The Mid-West 1975 – 80 and Extermination Nights In
The Sixth City! Cleveland, Ohio: Punk And The Decline Of The Mid-West 1975 –
82. That the last two do not have volume numbers is curious as it suggests
maybe a more open ended approach to the series? As well as Australian punk
there could surely be volumes on German, Spanish and Japanese
punk?

Before we discuss some potential reasons
for this oversight lets return to Walker. In many ways, Walker has already done
Soul Jazz’s job for them, publishing the Inner City Sound book first in 1982
and again in 2005 with some extra sections. The republication came about
partially as a result of the original book fetching outrageous prices on eBay
and having been bootlegged and sold around Melbourne. However, the straw that
broke the camel’s back was Mojo, a January 2004 issue on Post Punk and perhaps
the CD with the April 2005 issue that paid only the most respects to the
Australian groups. Apparently not much has changed in the attitude towards
Australian music since 2005, but we will still give Soul Jazz the benefit of
the doubt and assume that a future compilation is in the works.

Inner City Sound the book is essentially a
compilation of articles, reviews and interviews culled from punk and post-punk
reviews, many of which were written by Walker or appearing in zines he
coordinated. Walker went on to become a noted journalist on TV and in press of
the scene and appears in the odd video clip interviewing some of the stalwarts
of the scene. He also wrote Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977–1991 which was published in 1996 and covers much of the
same territory.

Clinton Walker interviews Rowland S Howard
about Shivers

The re-release of the Inner City Sound book
was also accompanied by an essential 2xCD compilation of published tracks as well as some unreleased demos exclusive to
the compilation and featuring extra notes and Walker’s indispensable family
tree map of Australian punk and post-punk groups. Given the exorbitant price
that many of the original Australian issue 7” singles fetch on Discogs and eBay
as well as the extravagant rerelease programs underway for some bands (such as
Domino’s recent Go-betweens box set), you would think there might be sufficient
interest in such a compilation of Australian music?

So what would a hypothetical Punk 45:
Australian Punk and Post-Punk 1976-1982 sound like if we assume the rule that
we can only collect tracks off 7” singles and one per group? This is my
independently curated list and although it overlaps in parts with the Inner
City Sound compilation it is independent.

Punk 45: No place in the sun for dogs in
space: Australian punk and post-punk 1976-1982

The originators and pioneers:

The Saints – No time

Like Walker, Brisbane’s The Saints must
feel a little hard done by. They are often credited as being one of the world’s
first punk bands, forming in 1974 and self-releasing their debut single “(I’m)
Stranded” in 1976 on their own Fatal Records label, before most other punk
groups, including the Sex Pistols, had even begun to make any kind of real impression
and before do-it-yourself releases had become the wider norm. “(I’m) Stranded”,
also lent its name to the debut album released a year later in 1977 and to
Walker’s book, and is therefore one of the most iconic releases in Australian
music and this track would be an obvious choice for inclusion. However, the
B-side of this single “No time” is an acceptable alternative choice if only for
being less obvious. It was also an album track off the debut and is a
coruscating track with a burning, buzzing riff. Second choice might also be the
longer “Erotic neurotic” and another blinding track from the debut album. Sadly,
the Saint’s trip to England to promote the album would end in lack of
acceptance from the fickle English press and disaster and would provoke the
first of many line-up changes in the group that would essentially derail the
groups quest for success. Consequently the follow-up album “Prehistoric Sounds” from
1978 was a bit uncertain and frustrating for a lot of pure punk fans as it
dropped the naked aggression for a more sophisticated approach even if it was
based on the Stooges “Fun House” (check Chris Bailey’s snarled vocal
impersonation of Iggy and the sax overdubs not quite reminiscent of Steve
Mackay). As a result of this album and the subsequent developments of the
group, the Saints were something of an unfairly derided name in Australia in the
90s and were more associated, rightly or wrongly, with pub rock than any kind
or indie or punk music although with time their legacy has come been more
re-established.

Radio Birdman – New Race

The story of Sydney’s Radio Birdman is
almost the same as The Saints: forming in 1974 they also pioneered the punk
trail, released one of the world’s first punk singles in 1976 followed by their
debut album in 1977, “Radios Appear”, before fracturing after a failed trip to
the UK at the height of punk and their powers. The band’s debut 7” “Burn my
eye” and album featured a more melodic take on punk relative to the firestorm
of the Saints’ debut. The band’s sound drew heavily from US influences,
particularly Detroit (guitarist Deniz Tek was originally a resident of the city
before migrating to Australia) and the tighter guitar sound of MC5’s “Back in
the USA” album as well as the Stooges who they covered on the opening track of
the album and who also gave the band their name from a lyric to the track
“1970”. None of the four tracks from the 1976 debut single “Burn my eye” appeared
on “Radios Appear” making them an interesting collectors choice for inclusion,
but another early single of interest was “New race" from 1977 which was
recorded in several versions including one on 1996’s “Ritualism”. The music is
one of the most overtly punky tracks recorded by the group whereas the simple
lyrics read like a call to arms and a marker of change in youth culture towards
more independence

“There's gonna be a new race

Kids are gonna start it up”

Boys next door/The Birthday Party – Happy
Birthday

The origins of the chequered careers of Nick
Cave, Mick Harvey and Rowland S Howard as well as their less enduring companions
Tracey Pew and Phill Calvert is a twisting and slippery story that is hard to
pin down. One 7” would certainly never do them justice in any incarnation. The
original trio of Cave, Harvey and Calvert formed in 1973 at Caulfield Grammar
School before Pew joined in 1975. The band was a staple on the Melbourne scene
and often toured the east coast The Inner City Sound compilation features the
track “Sex crimes” that was a live favourite from this early incarnation of the
group and shows their more traditional punk roots, but this was never
officially released and is one of a number of early demos on the “Lost and
brave…” compilation available on eBay, but strangely absent from Discogs.

When Howard joined in June 1978 the band
had already recorded and released the “These boots were made for walking” 7”
single and several other tracks for the legendary Suicide label and its 1978 Lethal Weapon compilation. With Howard on board, the second side of
“Door, door” became a different affair and Howard’s track “Shivers” was added
which became one of the most iconic tracks in Australian music history (and
also featured in the Dogs in Space film of which more below). The original of
“Shivers” was demoed by Howard’s earlier supergroup Young Charlatans and has a
rougher edge and is available on Inner City Sound, but never officially
released except for a rare 1981 cassette appearance, despite being widely
covered by many groups based on the Boys Next Door version.

The sound of “Door, door” was strangely
poppy after the punkier earlier tracks and before the claustrophobic darkness
of their subsequent metamorphosis. The follow-up “Hee haw” 12” EP from 1979 is also
essential, but it is the 7” of “Happy birthday”, also the last track off “The
Birthday Party” album released by Missing Link in 1980, that acted as the
crucial fulcrum for the band, precipitating the change of name to the Birthday
Party and their exodus to the UK where they were one of the few Australian
groups to genuinely make it. The single was also released by The Birthday Party
as the B side to their first single the “Mr Clarinet” 7” from the same year.

“King Ink” from “Prayers on Fire” is one of the most significant Australian and
post punk tracks of all time, but was never released as a single. However, the
Birthday Party also deserve mention for “The friend catcher” 7” which showcases
Howard’s inventive and intimidating guitar sound that would go on to influence
everyone from shoe gaze rock to techno and artists like Sandwell District; and
“Release the bats” single from 1981 which although not the best release from
the group also became iconic for its influence on the burgeoning goth scene and
for other new romantic groups.

East coast artists

The Ears – Leap for lunch

The Ears was a Melbourne band who released
little in their time, only two 7”s including “Leap for lunch”, but would
nonetheless have a defining influence on the history of Australian punk and
post punk. This was largely due to the relationship of front man Sam Sejavka
and film director Richard Lowenstein. The two shared a house together and the
events would become the legendary film Dogs in Space, named after a blistering
and incredible track from the band that was a live favourite, but unreleased
until 2010 when it became available on the "Dogs in Space" collection available
on the bands Bandcamp page . The film Dogs in Space was filmed in the same house
where Sejavka and Lowenstein lived, refurbished at some expense for the film,
and Lowenstein also directed the video clip apparently filmed also in the same
house. Lowenstein would go on to make several video clips for groups including
INXS and U2, and would make the documentary “We're Living on Dog food”, which
accompanied the re-release of Dogs in Space, and later in 2011 the award
winning documentary Autoluminescent about the life of Rowland S Howard.
Incidentally, Sejavka is played by Michael Hutchence of INXS in the film who
sings a cover of Suicide’s “Franky Teardrop” whereas Marie Hoy sings Rowland S
Howard’s “Shivers”. Both artists would later appear on the Max Q project with
Ollie Olsen.

Primitive Calculators – I can´t stop it

Also appearing in Dogs in Space were the
Primitive Calculators, another band from Melbourne. The Calculators were again,
under recorded, but did release a couple of 7” s and an eponymous album in
1982. Several reformations also saw a second album emerge in 2013 on Chapter Music,
another long-lived and important Perth-Melbourne label run by Guy Blackman,
that has released several other important punk and post-punk compilations.
However, the impact of the group is also recorded through their critical role
in organizing and donating equipment for the so-called “Little Band Nights” at
Melbourne’s Champion Hotel in Fitzroy as well as in the Crystal Ballroom in St
Kilda, a shooting venue for the live band scenes in Dogs in Space, where the
likes of Whirlywirld and Boys Next Door, amongst others, would play. The band’s
sound at the time was impressively future-looking, mixing electronics with
guitars in a heady, noisy blend.

Whilrywirld – Window to the world

Ollie Olsen started out in legendary
Melbourne group Young Charlatans with Rowland S Howard, Janine Hall (also at
one time of the Saints and Weddings, Parties, Anything) and Jeffrey Wegener (also
playing temporarily in the Birthday Party, the Saints and with former Saint Ed
Keuper in the Laughing Clowns). Having grown tired of purely guitar music,
Olsen began to incorporate electronic instruments into his new band Whirlywirld
as well his other project Hugo Klang. Walker famously described them in Inner
City Sound as “not unlike a truckie yelling and screaming as he drives slowly
through a china shop.” While some of the music pushed towards the new wave
synth music beginning to develop at the time, Olsen always maintained an
experimental edge, with some abrasive sounds and repetitive rhythms that
foresaw techno as evident on Whirlywirld’s 1980 mini LP on Missing Link.

Like many of the Australian punk and
post-punk artists, Olsen would later find some critical success, but limited
commercial success with the Max Q project with Michael Hutchence on sabbatical
from INXS. Named after Olsen’s dog.

Slugfuckers – Deaf disco

Sydney’s Slugfuckers had the best name and
the most unrecognisable lineage. Part punk, part psych and part art project, the
group featured as core members Terry Blake (vocals), John Laidler (guitar) and
Graham Forsyth (bass) and recorded only a small amount of material in their
time including two 7”s and the “Transformational Salt” album all of which were
collected on the 2xCD set Cacophony: 1979-1981which also featured some of their
inspired live jams. Their “Instant Classic” EP featured two tracks, the first
called “Deaf Disco” was a parody of Public Image’s recently released “Death
Disco” and highlights the bands anti-establishment and unhinged low-fi approach
to punk’s DIY attitude.

Thought Criminals – More suicides, please

The Thought Criminals had a classic buzzsaw
guitar sound with a typical Australian black humoured lyric on their second
single released in 1979 on their own Double Think label (both the label and
group name were inspired by George Orwell’s 1984). However, the career of the
group was anything but typical. After several years on the live scene and
self-releasing a debut album “Speed Madness and Flying Saucers” the group
retired from gigging in disgust at the music industry (check the track “I Won't
Pay (For Punk Records)” off their debut single to get an idea for some of the reasons
why). Nonetheless, they continued to record while their label became an
important operational point for many other bands in terms of management,
releases and promotion.

Essendon Airport – How low can you go

Before !!! (chk chk chk) and Swedish techno
duo Shxcxchcxsh was Melbourne art rockers → ↑ → (pronounced with three clicks
of the tongue) who were in existence as early as 1975. Their mixture of punk,
electronics, experimental music and multimedia work was as impossible to
classify as it is hard to find traces of on the internet except one video on
Youtube (below). The group thankfully also spawned several side projects
including Essendon Airport which continued the band’s curious blend of
experimentation with pop forms. Essendon Airport released the “Palimpsest” album
in 1981 as well as a handful of singles including the “Sonic investigations (of
the trivial)” in 1980. The sound on this release, mixing keyboards, simple
electronic beats chirpy guitar patterns and brushed drums sounds like the
origins of To Rococo Rot and later post-rock than anything classically post-punk.

Voigt/465 – A secret west

Hailing from Sydney was another short-lived
and uncompromising band Voigt 465 who’s points of reference are as much
Krautrock, especially Faust, as well as the avant garde (Hunters and Collectors
also had a strong Krautrock influence, being named after a Can track off “Landed”).
The group only existed for around 2 years from 1977 until 1979 when bass-player
Lindsay O’Meara left to join Crime and the City Solution (who themselves
remained unrecorded until the 1980s). The band released a solitary 7” and an
album “Slights unspoken”, both of which were originally self-released and
unavailable but rumours suggest that it may be re-released again soon by
Chapter Music. This B-side “A secret west” from their single is hard to
classify with its male and female vocal cacophony, driving, but buried guitar
and proto-electronics.

The Go-Betweens - Your turn, my turn

There is a lot already written about
Brisbane’s Go-Betweens. Their story is a long and winding one as they journeyed
from the rough climes of Brisbane’s punk scene, to Sydney and eventual
commercial success. Their earliest singles, recently reissued as a single disc
as part of a mammoth retrospective boxset, are far from punk in sound, but
clearly punk in attitude as they reacted to and defied the rough and tumble of
Brisbane’s scene fired up and fuelled by the troubles the Saint’s had had with
the law and the perennial overarching arm of the conservative government of the
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the Hillbilly Dictator. Having many parallels with
Perth’s The Triffids, their origins were in the art and drama department of the
university and the jangly pop of later Velvet Underground tracks (in Lindy
Morrison they even had a female drummer akin to Moe Tucker) and referenced a
more literary and literate underground than the mindless romping of a lot of
purely reactionary punk that burned itself out on its own anger. Once they had
a few singles under their belt, the Go-Betweens started to sound a little more
original and like their future selves, but despite a lot of underground
interest and a formidable song writing partnership in Robert Forster and Grant
McClennan, fame and fortune would be slow to come. “Your turn, my turn” is from
a 7” released on Missing Link in 1981.

Interestingly, in 2005 the Go-Betweens
released their “Oceans Apart” album that featured the track “Darlingurst
Nights” which has a retrospective lyric about the groups time playing in Sydney
in the post-punk period that reference Clinton Walker as Clint in the closing
lyrics (Darlinghurst is an inner city suburb of Sydney).

The Tuff Monks – After the Fireworks

Finally, a curiosity of the times is the
Tuff Monks solitary 7” single on Au Go Go. The Tuff Monks were a bona fide
super group featuring the three members of the Go-Betweens and the three core
members of the Birthday Party (Cave, Howard and Harvey) in a one off track.

West coast artists

Victims – Television addict

Easily one of the best Australian punk
anthems was the Victims “Television Addict” in 1977, making it also one of the
world’s earliest. The group consisted of Dave Faulkner (stage name Dave Flick)
on guitar and vocals, Dave Cardwell (stage name Rudolph V) on bass and James
Baker (drums) and their influence was clearly the heavier rock sounds of
Detroit and the chaotic abandon and fuzz of MC5 and the Stooges. Their second
7” would also feature a sister song “TV freak” that was blisteringly fast and
short. There were only two 7”s in the groups short career, rereleased on
Japan’s 1977 Records in 2010, but the group members would go on to have
important careers. Faulker would also play in the Manikins and found the Hoodoo
Gurus, whereas Baker would also play in the Scientists, Hoodoo Gurus and
Beasts of Bourbon.

Manikins - I Never Thought I'd Find

Not the Swedish group of the same name, but
another short-lived group from Perth. Of their three 7”s, the best is probably
the first, 1978s “Model for mankind” whose A-side is the mesmerizingly catchy
and rough “I Never Thought I'd Find Someone Who Could Be So Kind” which was a
track that also didn’t feature on their 1980 album. The sound is incredibly big
and the lead single “Premonition” sounds frighteningly like grunge and fuzzy bands
like Dinosaur Junior who would not arrive until several years in the future.

Scientists - Swampland

The Scientists had their origin in the
Cheap Nasties a group formed by key member Kim Salmon in 1976. The Scientists
were active by 1977 and left a long and important legacy not only in Perth, but
in the Australian scene and even internationally where they are heralded as
godfather’s of grunge and one single, indeed one compilation could never do them justice. It was often said that their late 70s and early 80s
shows were as good as anything the MC5 ever did in terms of intensity and power,
but just that less people saw them. Certainly their recordings are honed and
dangerous right from 1979’s debut single “Frantic romantic”, but it is the
“Swampland” single, their first after they eponymous debut in 1981 and first
for Au Go Go around the time they left Perth for the eastern states and later
Europe that really set them on their way.

The Triffids – Spanish blue

AC/DC is too global to be really associated
with Perth, Bluetile Lounge perhaps
still too unknown, but it is The Triffids who are probably Perth’s most iconic
group. This is not down to just their success, much of this hard come by, but
due to their lyrical content as well. Perhaps no other group has caught the
slow and mesmerising lifestyle of the west, its boredom and attrition under a
fierce summer sun and its isolation from the rest of Australia. Tracks like “Place
in the sun” and especially “Spanish blue” from 1982 and its lyric:

“Nothing
happens here

Nothing gets done

But you get to like it

You get to like the
beating of the sun”

are just as iconic as their seminal work “Born sandy
devotional” from 1986 with its cover image of Mandurah in the 1960s (once a
holiday destination and now a suburb of the sprawling city), and its frank and
vulnerable lyrics. The title reference is also partly anti-establishment and a reaction against mindless acceptance of ideas and the common teaching that Perth has a Mediterranean climate (presumably said to please the southern European migrants) when in fact most people from the city have never left there and don't really know the truth. The “Field of Glass” 12” from 1985 is also an amazing work,
especially the epic title track clocking in at just under 9 minutes.

It’s also worth watching another version of
the song here with an awful TV interview on Sounds (check out that shirt and
the pint of beer) that also features Chris Bailey from the Saints and Joe
Camilleri (Black Sorrows who also has a cameo in Dogs in Space as well as
various punk and other Australian music releases from the time).

Punk origins of more commercial groups

Many of the groups who made it big in the
mid- to late-80s in Australia where often derided by the indie contingent for
their commercial successes, but this is perhaps to overlook their origins and
often hard fought struggle. The literal long-way-to-the-top. Midnight Oil had
their origins as Farm as early as 1972 and were gigging regularly in 1975 and
released their debut album and first single on their own Powderworks label in
1978, but despite the often jerky energy they didn’t really feel like a punk
group.

The Oils manager Gary Morris may have been
right when he told the Farris Brothers, also once briefly The Vegetables, to
change their name to INXS, but he was wisely ignored (and subsequently dropped
in favour of Chris Murphy) when he suggested the group adopt clean living and
Christian themes to the music. The group debuted with several punk and new wave
singles in the 1980s before finding gradual success. The B-side of their first
single was one of their roughest cuts “We are the vegetables” and a theme for
their former incarnation.

Curiously INXS would come to fame with
albums produced by Chris Thomas, who had shared duties on the Sex Pistols album
“Never mind the bollocks”.

Chris Murphy, the INXS manager, was also
shared with Melbourne group The Models who also had a long and fascinating
history before reaching number 1 with “Out of mind, out of sight” in 1985 (a
track softened by the synths at the front, but the guitar in the back is still
fairly gnarly). To confirm the groups authentic origins, the group’s first
release was even a split 7” in 1979 with the Boys Next Door on the other side
and released on the short-lived Crystal Ballroom label, named after the legendary
St Kilda “little band scene” venue. The band’s sound was always more new wave
than punk, often featuring synths saxophone and sparser instrumentation than
some of their punk rivals. As well as the intriguing, but in-progress 7”
“Talking” from 1980, their first major label 7” for Mushroom, 1980s “2 people
per so km” (a reference to Australia’s low population density) from their debut
album “ALPHABRAVOCHARLIEDELTAECHOFOXTROTGOLF” was also of interest for its
punk-funk sound, before gradual industry pressure and ambition drove them in a
more commercial direction.

The two most recognised epicentres of
punk’s genesis in the 1970s were New York and London. Both places at this time
were turbulent post-industrial centres of dystopian living. New York was
essentially bankrupt and crime ridden, with a down town rife with drugs and violence,
whereas London had garbage piled in the streets while the country was also
close to requesting a bail out from the IMF as the economy sputtered and
shuddered to a halt due to the international oil crisis and the oppression of a
conservative government. In down town Manhattan the World Trade Centres had
opened in 1974 as a bitter sign of contrast between the wealth of those who had
it and those who did not: the Bronx was literally on fire at the turn of the decade
as gasoline shortages, black outs and unemployment began to take its toll. In
the UK the picture was the same: closed factories, anger and the rise of the polluted
Ballardian city-scape. In both countries a policy of cultural isolation was in
order, the US from the world and the UK from Europe. Meanwhile, racial tensions
were major issues in both countries. The music scene was also bloated and
stagnant, with prog rock and the tail end of glam failing to deliver any deeper
meaning as disco went underground. This was the psychogeography of punk.

Although much is shared between all
regions, in Australia, however, it wasn’t quite the same picture as the US and
the UK and one can interpret this to some degree in the music. In Australian punk
music there is remarkably less anger and political discourse perhaps reflecting
a less dystopian psychogeography. Certainly The Saints and Radio Birdman who
pioneered punk in Australia had the attitude and the aggression of their UK and
US contemporaries, particularly the Americans and the Detroit scene, which
caught on to a lot of other bands, but generally the trend was for power and
aggression not to be channelled so much against
the system, but for a new cultural
identity and musical road map for independent listening. Radio Birdman had
pleaded for the “new race” to come out of punk and Saints had got it right when
speaking out against the police on “Brisbane (Security city)” from “Prehistoric
Sound”, but there were few other signs of physical rebellion.

“Thirteen hot nights in a row

The cops drive past and they move slow”

The cops had become a constant force at
their shows that had degenerated into pantomime punk violence and this would be
paralleled in Western Australia (see below), the other ultra conservative
state.

Overall, Australia had fewer factories to
close down and inner city centres that were generally less crowded and cleaner
places than their bigger rivals overseas. The endless space also meant plenty
of room to expand by centrifugal force, with the centres abandoned to business
and residences built in the endless periphery creating new urban sprawls and
their requisite shopping centres that were the real harbours of boredom that
was such a central theme to punk. In London the Trellick Tower and Ballard’s
High Rise novel were meant to capture the idea of internal, self-contained
living, a kind of buffer zone against society, with ultimately alarming
consequences. But these types of high rises are rarer in Australia where urban
isolation and self-containment is created by space: you move from your detached
house in the suburbs, separated from your neighbours (sic) by fences, to your car, to
the freeway, to the parking at work and into your cubicle or office and then
you repeat the process in reverse to go home again without every really sharing
the space. You stay indoors away from the heat receiving the outside through
the television or the radio.

The Saint's also catch this idea further in "Brisbane (Security city)" where security, as well as being the police, is also made a play on the idea of feeling safe, safe at home and safe from harm:

"Living room isolation

Extraordinary situation

I see police but where's the crime?

We're just like convicts doing time"

The Birthday Party too refer to "a prison of sound" in The Friend Catcher which was one of Howard's finest moments with the band.The idea of law and lawlessness is forever in the subconsciousness of Australian art and identity, where in the founding days everyone was essentially either a cop or a robber, until the post-war migration anyway. Where once the "stain" of having convict ancestory was shunned, it became something of a badge. But the situation is more complex than that. Once the two sides began to merge, the two psychologies fused, but did not lose their independence. On one side, Australian's love to be the rebel, the larrikin, to disrespect authority; but on the other the are highly conservative, fearful of change and requiring a nanny-like state of intervention and carefully sign-posted rule making to maintain order. The Australian psyche is one of cops and robbers. Let us not forget as well that "Prisoner - Cell Block H", one of Australia's most famous series started in April 1979 at the height of punk.

Returning to the idea of space, it is also one critical aspect
to The Triffids work, from 1983s "Treeless Plane" album, and in particular on their seminal track “Wide open road”
that would come later in 1986.

“I wake up in the morning

thinking I'm still by
your side

I reach out just to touch you

then I realise

It's a wide open road”

The Go-Betweens “Streets of your town” may also hide a darker side and a
similar theme within its candy pop exterior.

“Round and round up and down

Through
the streets of your town

Everyday I make my way

Through the streets of your
town”

Sung with a dizzy, buzz it almost feels happy and innocent, but it also
conjures maze like images of entrapment and the numbness of repetition ("The rain is on its way"). In
Australia, you don’t have to go to the country to find space and isolation,
there was also plenty in the city centre until recently (see also above in
relation to the Models track “2 people per so km”).

Of course everything was not idyll.
Unemployment figures in Australia increased from around 2% at the beginning of
the 1970s to be around 7.5% during the punk years, a noticeable shift fuelling
in part some restlessness in youth and also the squat scene from where punk had
its roots all over the world. This value would be the result of the oil crisis,
a poor global economic performance and lack of macroeconomic management at
home, although the peak unemployment figures would not occur until 1992 as
Australia struggled to capitalise on its natural resources, waiting for the
Asian boom to launch forward. That is to say that Australia moved from having
one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world to a relatively high rate in
the punk years (in the non-depression era) in a short period of time.

The 1970s also saw more migration, and not
just from the UK and Western Europe as hoped, but from Asia, particularly from
Vietnam. Following the takeover of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese
communist government in April 1975, Australia agreed to resettle its share of
Vietnam-born refugees. This clearly signified the end of “white” Australia
policies and was not without its problems and lead to a rise in nationalism and
racism. Ironically it was the second generation of many migrants who often
fuelled the racist agenda, particularly British migrants in conservative areas
as well as, for example, the infamous Jack van Tongren .
This was not unique to Australia and was also occurring in England, for
example, with the rise of skin head punks. The Soul Jazz compilations
conveniently erase this history from punk, sanitising it to some degree for
their target audience, but these fascinating news reports from Australia in
1981 show the impact felt by Perth Oi punk and skins band the Quick and the Dead
who despite their protestations, clearly come across as likely believers in the
swastika and the National Front. David McComb of the Triffids often complained about the number of skins turning up to punk shows in WA, a good a reason as any to make a new kind of music.

The corny journalists (one of them a young Terry
Willesee) confirm the views of the background of Australian punks in their banal
and scripted exchange: “The phenomenon in Britain was born out of the under
developed or badly deprived industrial areas of the country, can that parallel
be drawn here in Perth? Well, only in as much as most are from working class
backgrounds [indicating that there was essentially no working class as such; a foreign import] although it is interesting to note that one of the girls injured in
Northam [scene of a reported fight
between Skins and Rockers] gave her address as Peppermint Grove [perhaps the
most expensive and lucrative suburb of Perth and hence not working class*] As
with the link with the mother country, estimates vary, but estimates suggest
that half of those in Perth are British born and the rest are
Australians."

* As a footnote, David McComb grew up in The Cliffe one of the most historical, iconic and controversial houses in Peppermint Grove. The band had this to say about the poor treatment of the house where the yhad recorded at times and taken inspiration: "When we were in Europe, we were invited to London for the unveiling of a plaque on a building with The Triffids name on it - on the building where we recorded our album Born Sandy Devotional. That building was in quite a derelict part of town. This council put a plaque up on a building where we recorded, so I find it's kind of odd that the Peppermint Grove council now doesn't think that the very house where the band started out is not worth saving.".

But the best is for last in their brief
presentation of the groups 7” single “Another violent night” which does nothing
to convince that the group are not looking for trouble.

But the idea of migration to a former prison colony with little history and a vague and counter-productive cultural identity must have pained and frustrated many of the migrants, Europeans and Asians alike. It is a hard concept to take on board by tourists temporarily visiting Australia, but the slow pace, vast size and geographical isolation make it seem like you will never leave, and many never do. For this it must have been a bitter sweet feeling to be there, but thinking of somewhere else. It is no surprise that most of the bigger punk groups left Australia to try and make it big, but to the chagrin of many, as Australians they were neither taken seriously nor their roots well accepted whether they were from the Mother Land or elsewhere. Again, The Saints have their finger somewhere near the pulse on "Brisbane (Security city)":

"It's always guarded by the sea

Our prison island is not free

Our hope goes, but is still there"

Even the cops are in jail dow nunder, no surprise that jail and crime are such common lyrical/thematic themes from The Saints, Nick Cave, Rowland S Howard to hAC/DC and Rose Tattoo. One cannot help but draw comparison between the idea that Australia was founded as a way of isolating undesireables (and not "real" criminals; most of the criminals were not rapists and murderers who would have received capital punishment, but poor people displaced and unemployed due to the Industrial Revolution and the over crowded cities) by sending them away to an island where they would not contaminate the homeland, in much the same way as Australia currently sends "unprocessed" refugees to off-shore Pacific Islands . History repeats itself, much like an abused child often becomes an abuser (sic).

But there is another provocative aspect to
Australian punk and post-punk groups that is a little harder to see from the
outside and that is the literariness of certain bands, particular Nick Cave’s
work (check King Ink and the references to Kafka or the Harold Pinter reference
in the band name and more), Thought Criminals (George Orwell references), the Go-Betweens (named after the LP Hartley novel) and The Triffids (named after the John Wyndham novel) Australia
has always favoured “physical” and less intellectual men and women and this
part of the national psyche was at its peak at the time of punk and is one that
still persists to some degree today. Australia has always been a rugged colony,
a man’s world and often a rough one back in those days where the typical Aussie
male was expected to be a tough bloke with a big gut, thongs (flip flops) a
beer in hand, misogynist racist views and a cultural indifference to all except
hard rock. Sporting achievements have always ranked more than artistic or
intellectual merit and various conservative governments have continuously
rallied against the “elitism” of intellectual activity, which is one way of
trying to stifle debate and academic and creative expression. This was the
archetypal Norm of the Life Be In It campaign, Paul Hogan, or Ted Bullpitt from TV’s Kingswood
Country, in essence the Australian bogan or yobbo.

Cultural note: In Australia, the first
wave of non-British immigrants, usually Italians and Greeks, were referred to derogatively
as “wogs”, one of whom, an Italian called Bruno, is married to Bullpitt’s
daughter in the scene. Bruno is a second generation born in the similar
sounding town Wagga Wagga hence the pun and joke of the scene. Note also there was
an Adelaide punk band called the Wogs and famous folk singer Eric Bogle, famed
for the highly nationalist “The band played Waltzing Matilda” also wrote a satirical "nationalist" song “I hate wogs”

“I love this sunburned country and I'm
bloody proud of it

And I love our simple way of life and the
things we all hold dear

Like V.F.L. and Big Ben Pies and foamin'
Toohey's beer

I love our open friendliness where a man
can make good mates

In fact in all Australia there's just one
thing I hates:

I hate Wogs, they live like dogs”

The musical gods of this type of Australian
male were the two of the biggest groups at the time, Cold Chisel and AC/DC,
both working class bands whose roster was half full of migrants and half
Australians, particularly Scotts. It wasn’t only Bon Scott who was from the
Highlands, but the Young brothers and Cold Chisels’ iconic singer Jimmy Barnes
whereas Men at Work who wrote one of Australia’s most famous anthems “Down
under” also included a Scott. Barnes was particularly legendary for his
gravelly, shouting voice, unkempt appearance and his heavy drinking antics that
captured the macho Aussie belief in the power of drinking and respect for the
man who could hold his liquor.

Strangely, the DNA of the two groups was
almost what you would expect to go into a punk group, but didn’t: both groups
featured bored, working class youths armed with guitars and privy to plenty of
violent incidents to give them attitude. Chisel in many ways captured an
eternal snapshot of the times, a sense of isolation, cultural confusion and
even a bit of politics, but were essentially a mirror of Australia and not a
force of change or a projection into the future (“Cheap wine and three day
growth”). They were the status quo, the man. One of their most controversial songs is
“Khe Sanh” about the restlessness of Vietnam vets after the war and paralleled
by Bruce Springsteen in "Born in the USA" to similar effect. Despite the powerful
connotations, the lyric

“their legs were often open

but their minds were always
closed"

might as well sum up the philosophy of the culture they
represented, the virile, macho Aussie bloke and his attitude to culture and
women (see below). Ironically “Khe Sanh” has been called "a song that will
forever epitomise this period of Australian music" and well it might for
those who don’t step outside the tight inner circle. Epitomise for some, but
not all. The music too was far too conventional to really fire up any
intellectual movement or youth culture; it just reinforced what was already
there and concreted the conservative path for the next few years until it
became merely and only entertainment, nostalgia and another arm of the music
industry, albeit one whose legacy never really made it out of Australia because
of their hyperspecific psychogeographical references.

AC/DC were the opposite in terms of
propensity. They were always international. Their path didn’t take the streets
of your town or the wide open roads, but stayed cruising on the perennial
highway to hell that runs downwards from every town in the world, albeit one
that does travel better in a V8 muscle car or other vehicle that reflects your
physical potency. AC/DC’s themes were always more banal and more general and
hardly cloaked in local signals or poetry and hence their global stardom. There
was no complication there and no room for thought. Perfect for the Aussie bogan
and their equivalent around the world. Australia’s “problem” was the lack of
class stratification present in other societies that could buffer such a
cultural phenomenon or bud off another archetype, at least until INXS came
along in the mid-1980s.

Two of AC/DC’s punk era songs highlight the
difference between the two schools of the archetypal Aussie man of the time,
the classical common “working class” man (sic) and the alternative young
intellectual. First up is 1977’s blues rock standard “Whole lotta Rosie”

“She ain't exactly pretty

Ain't exactly small

Fourt'two thirt'nine fiftysix”

Later the group let you know where they are at, no beating around the bush (so to speak):

“Honey you can do it

Do it to me all night long”

This line of course leads in to the equally
legendary sequel “She shook me all night long” released in 1980, a macho,
misogynistic song about being man enough to fuck a tireless lascivious woman,
who could also still be Rosie of course. But ironically “She shook me all night
long” could also just as easily be about premature ejaculation (“She told me to
come but I was already there”). Importantly, the opening line refers to the
ubiquitous vehicle necessary for navigating the endless roads and spaces of
Australia and of course a metaphor for her disease-free vagina.

“She was a fast machine she kept her motor
clean”

But presumably her “sightless eyes telling
me no lies” aren’t good for reading books even if her “American thighs” were
good for something, sex obviously, but perhaps sport as well?

Contrast this with the track “Karen”, the
B-side to the Go-Betweens debut single “Lee Remick” (itself a quaint song about
infatuation, but hardly a meaty, masturbation fantasy) which came out the same
year as “She shook me all night long”.

The lyric:

“I don't want no hoochie-coochie mama

No back door woman

No Queen Street sex thing”

would seem to be a subliminal response and
rejection of AC/DC’s Rosie or “she shook me all night long”. Moreover, there
are no physical features and Playboy numbers to attract you:

“She's no queen

She's no angel

Just a peasant from the village”

But above all else, Karen works in a
library and is in the know about a host of the greats of literature and:

“[She] Helps me find James Joyce

She always makes the right choice”

One of the early Triffids singles “Twisted
brain” The B-side to Spanish blue) also captures the opposite angle to AC/DC. Here is also what appears to
be another “typical” Aussie man full of lust, beer and bravado, but with a
totally different world inside:

“How I’d like to take her outside

Under bad light, blind drunk, doe eyed

But I’m no good for her”

Instead of the unquestionable cocksuredness
of AC/DC and the expectant satisfaction, there is a more complex man of doubt
and feeling and alienation, one who might read books and be an “elitist”. The
Triffids would continue the very un-punk theme of relationships and fidelity
right through their oeuvre to the peak of “Born Sandy Devotional” whose lyrics
refer to children, doubt and separation. Sandy also had a double meaning, and
was on one hand the dry, infertile sand of Western Australia and the cover
image, as well as a fictional woman, not quite the Rosie of AC/DC one imagines.
Or Rose Tattoo, one of the other critical “yobbo” bands of the time who seem
less than a stone’s throw from AC/DC country with their debut 7” from 1977 “Bad
boy for love” that starts with a motor sound and then rehashes the criminal element of Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" and AC/DC’s “Jailbreak”

n for the biker crowd (Rose Tattoo's Angry Anderson would ignominiously lose his toughness performing "Suddenly" the Kylie and Jason wedding anthem on Neighbours many years later).

“Thirty days in the county jail

Let me out and I just wanted to wail

Some fool tried to hold me down

I got drunk and I ripped up the town”

The aforementioned Saints track “Brisbane
(Security city)” is also telling to how the underground stood on these issues with
the downcast lyric:

“I don't want it let down

My own hopes for this town

It's so hard to get around

Lots of cars, but not much sound in town”

This also came from a group who had had there run ins with the law, but who came from the other side.

In the mainstream then, there was nothing more
to Australia than (Australian rules) football (a man’s game not like soccer for sheila’s wogs and poofters ),
meatpies and Holden cars.

Australia’s dystopian iconography of the
punk era is thus space, motor vehicles (and their phallic potency) and territorial
violence, or in other words, the world of the 1979 film Mad Max, inspired in part by the oil
crisis of the time. It’s probably no coincidence that the logo of the film, and the logo of Dogs in Space, also
uses the same lightning bolt as the AC/DC logo. There are other clues as well. The film was billed as "the full force of the future" whereas gang member Bubba Zanetti played by Geoff Parry is asked about what happened to Night Rider's ruined car (Night Rider himself appears to be a yobbo on a jail break with a dyed red head punk girl in the shot gun seat). Zanetti (a wog name perhaps?) responds "Maybe it was anxiety?" referring to the work of Max and his doomed colleague Jim Goose (Steve Bisley), perhaps a forerunner to Anthony Edward's equally ill-fated Nick "Goose" Bradshaw in Top Gun, in many ways the 80s American equivalent of Top Gun. Critically, Max is both Cop and Robber, a real hero and anti-hero, donning punks leathers (remember that even Fonzie from Happy Days nearly had his leather jacket censored back in those days) and ruling the highways with both law and anti-law. In the end, dystopia down-under is more Crash than High Rise. The anxiety ruining the cars is of course society: maybe our internal division made this? (Midnight) Oil or not oil (Mad Max 2), or law, disorder or Crime and the City Solution (Mad Max 3). But still, you first have to traverse the wide open roads.

Post-punk post-script

Warumpi Band - Jailangaru Pakarnu (out of jail)

If anyone had the rights to a punk attitude
in Australia it would be the Aborigines. Their treatment has always been poor
and their acceptance by non-Aborigines and reluctant or confused in the case of
Asian(non-British invader immigrants, and is growing worse due to the current
governments insensitive policies and embarrassing comments.
But of course, coming so far from the bush, and subject to so many obstacles,
it was always going to be difficult for Aboriginal music to rise. But in the
years following the post-punk period came the Warumpi Band, the first to
release a commercial single in their native language and to begin to represent
the Aboriginal struggle to a broader audience. Their sound is not punk nor
really Inner City, but is fundamental to Australian music history. They were
taken under the wing by Midnight Oil and released on their label and became an
important voice for many years before disbanding. Australia still needs more
groups like them to rise from the diesel and dust.

Cranky - Australia don't become America

Finally, much later in the 90s as yuppies
were the dominant cultural force and Australia, just over the peak wave of
unemployment in 1992 was entering a phase of cultural subservience to the USA,
then her closes allay, although the British roots were infinitely hard to
sever. Nevertheless, this magnetism for US wealth, prosperity and “freedom” and
its nuanced differences with the historical British conservative roots would be
what has shaped modern Australia ever since, a divided country that was, unlike
even “little” New Zealand too unsure to stand on its feet and be itself and
enjoy its diversity. The drive towards American culture was at times
intoxicatingly rushed and forced, ditching the BBC and the British connection
for more American than Australian TV, movies, music and attitudes to money.
John Howard even promised Australia would become Deputy to the US Sherriff in the Asia region, a
crass and sycophantic move in Yankee lingo if there ever was one. In 1995 the neo-punk group
Cranky responded with one of the most overtly political tracks at the time,
using a Dalek voice to warn young Australians “don’t become America”, the Dalek
being also a subtle reference perhaps to English culture and the BBC of youth,
whereas the sly flute intro may have been a reference to Men at Work and the
nationalistic strains of “Down Under”.

Dedicated to: Kim "House of Wax" Williams, my first and best (record store) dealer; Lynn, who gave me her copy of "Born Sandy Devotional" just before she died of cancer; Rowland S Howard,one of my heroes.